20 December 2013

The disgraceful publication of "There is no Ukraine" (later renamed into "Is There One Ukraine?"), where a controversial British historian(and fraudster) Orlando Figes calls for the division of Ukraine, is only only one example of an increasing trend toward implanting an idea that the division of Ukraine may solve some political problems. Viktor Yanukovych's Party of Regions discussed this idea already in 2004, during the "Orange revolution", when they held the Severodonetsk convention - a major separatist move of Yanukovych’s supporters aimed at the creation of the Sout-East Ukrainian Autonomous Republic. Present at that convention was then Moscow's Mayor Yuriy Luzhkov.

Why would Russian authorities be interested in the division of Ukraine if they want to incorporate it in its Eurasian Union? Russian fascist Aleksandr Dugin (whom I already mentioned earlier and will refer to again) believes that Ukraine is too diverse to be incorporated in its entirety in the Russian geopolitical project. In his Foundations of Geopolitics, where he describes the Russia-led Eurasian integration, Dugin writes:

The sovereignty of Ukraine represents such a negative phenomenon for Russian geopolitics that it can, in principle, easily provoke a military conflict. [...] Ukraine as an independent state with some territorial ambitions constitutes an enormous threat to the whole Eurasia, and without the solution of the Ukrainian problem, it is meaningless to talk about the contitental geopolitics. [...] Considering the fact that a simple intergration of Moscow with Kyiv is impossible and will not result in a stable geopolitical structure [...], Moscow should get actively involved in the re-organisation of the Ukrainian space in accordance to the only logical and natural geopolitical model.

18 December 2013

European extreme right and Russian imperialism: Understanding the 50 shades of brown

French and Austrian radical right-wing leaders have recently declared that the EU should not interefere in Ukraine's national sovereignty. Some may consider these statements as a spit in the face of the Ukrainian radical right-wing Svoboda party, which today supports Ukraine's European integration, but in fact these statements reveal a bigger picture.

The police refused to arrest him for several days, so if he is indeed now hiding in Russia, he had plenty of time to go to there without any fear of being arrested by the Ukrainian police on the border with Russia.

6 December 2013

One more important aspect should be taken into account too: the Ukrainian civil society which started the protests and is currently growing in strength. Non-partisan protesters on streets are very sceptical about the opposition, and demand a complete overhaul of the political system. A deal that could possibly be struck between the political elites will surely be not enough for them. The opposition understands and is concerned about this because hundreds of thousands of non-partisan protesters are the opposition's only resource of power. If the civil society sees that the opposition is using them for bargaining, it will withdraw its support, and even if the political elites strike some deal, the protests will likely to continue.

1 December 2013

A few extra-parliamentary extreme right groups took part in the attack on the President Administration in Kyiv today. Currently, there is no one reason to believe that these groups were somehow associated with the parliamentary radical right-wing Svoboda party or even with its paramilitary neo-Nazi units like C14.

One of these groups is "Tryzub" (Trident), which was originally formed as a paramilitary unit of the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists but then became an independent organisation.

Also seen by the President Administration is Dmytro Korchyn'sky, leader of the "Bratstvo" (Brotherhood) party. Korchyns'ky is widely considered an agent provocateur, and his "Bratstvo" already took part in several actions that were meant to provoke police suppression of peaceful protests. Moreover, it is said that Korchyns'ky taught a course at the explicitly pro-Putin "Seliger" summer camp in Russia.